Fighting flares in northern Gaza as Israeli tanks storm back

Gaza/Israel-Gaza border — Israeli tanks stormed back into parts of the northern Gaza Strip they left last week, residents said on Tuesday, bringing back some of the most intense fighting since the New Year when Israel said it was scaling back operations there.

Huge explosions could be seen over northern areas of Gaza from across the border with Israel, a rarity over the past two weeks after Israel announced a drawdown of forces in the north in a transition to smaller, targeted operations.

The rattle of intense gunfire carried across the border through the night. In the morning, contrails snaked through the sky as Israel’s Iron Dome defences shot down rockets fired by militants across the fence, proof that they can still launch them despite more than 100 days of war.

Israel said its forces killed dozens of Hamas fighters overnight in clashes in Beit Lahiya on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip. Gaza health officials said Israeli bombing killed 158 people in 24 hours, raising the enclave’s death toll in four months of war  to 24,285, with thousands more bodies feared lost in the rubble.

Israel launched the war to eradicate Hamas after militants stormed across the border fence on October 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing 240 hostages. The war has driven nearly all Gazans from their homes, some several times, and caused a humanitarian crisis, with food, fuel and medical supplies running low.

Under pressure from Washington to reduce civilian casualties, Israel said it is shifting tactics, transitioning from a full-scale ground assault to targeted operations against Hamas. It began that shift with a pullback in the north, where its forces started their ground offensive in October.

On Monday night, defence minister Yoav Gallant said the more recent ground assault in the south is drawing to a close. 

But any path towards scaling the war down still seems remote. Israel says it will not halt until Hamas is destroyed, and the fighters showing no sign of losing the ability to resist. Israeli officials said Hamas rockets hit an electronics shop in southern Israel on Tuesday morning. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Pushed back

Some of the hundreds of thousands of residents who fled the north earlier began returning last week to bombed-out areas from which the Israelis had withdrawn. But residents who spoke to Reuters on Tuesday said the resurgence of fighting in the north will halt plans to try to go home.

“We almost planned to return to our house in Nazla, east of Jabalia, but thank God we didn’t. This morning people living nearby arrived here and told us the tanks pushed back there,” said Abu Khaled, 43, a father of three now living with relatives in severely damaged Gaza City.

“The sounds of bombing from the tanks, from the planes didn’t stop all night. It reminded us of the first day of the ground incursion,” he said. “I will only believe tanks are out when a ceasefire agreement is announced.”

In the south of the enclave, Israeli forces have fought their way to the centre of the main southern city Khan Younis, and into towns north and east of the central city of Deir al-Balah.

Gallant’s announcement on Monday that the major ground offensive in the south will soon end poses the question of whether the Israelis will still try to advance in the remaining southern areas.

Most of Gaza’s 2.3-million people are now crowded into the few southern areas that Israeli troops have yet to enter, including Deir al-Balah and Rafah, on the southern edge of the strip.

In Khan Younis, Zaher Abu Zarifa wept and cradled a black plastic body bag holding his seven-year-old son Saif, one of at least 11 bodies brought out at a hospital morgue.

Zarifa said his son was killed by a missile while playing on a bicycle at a school gate. Later, at a small freshly dug grave, a gravedigger unzipped the bag so the father could kiss the boy’s face, then zipped it back up, took the boy and laid him gently in the ground.

“Forgive me, my son. I could not protect you,” the father said repeatedly.

In Rafah, residents were searching the rubble of the house of the Ibn Germy family that was bombed overnight.

“What is their fault? They were having dinner. We want peace not war,” said neighbour Salem al-Loulahy.

Reuters